The blog has been quiet for a few months now.  Not because I don’t have anything to write about, but rather because I haven’t made it a priority (in other words….lazy).  A regular writing schedule was something I wanted to sustain when I started this thing up, and it’s already falling off.   So this is my attempt to get back on the horse, and first order of business is to recap this years trip to Sunrise Lodge in British Columbia.   Here it goes…..

This was the third year in a row that I’ve made the trip out to Golden, BC for a week of guided hut-based backcountry skiing (for a little more background, see 2016 Year Recap post) through Golden Alpine Holidays (website).   This year, we mustered a good sized crew for the trip consisting of myself, my sister Roberta, college buddy Ryan, 4 of his friends from Seattle, and Christian from Calgary….for a total group size of 8.  We were joined by guides Marty and Isaac, cook Crystal, and for a few days GAH owner John joined us as well.

Sunrise lodge is the southernmost of Golden Alpine Holidays’ four huts in the Esplanade sub-range of the Selkirk mountains.   It sits pretty much at treeline towards the top of a draw/valley that faces east towards the Columbia river and the Rocky Mtns.   I went with Sunrise because: a) it was one of the two huts I hadn’t been to, and b) it’s still off the grid (the other hut that I haven’t visited – Sentry – has wifi service.  Didn’t want that).

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Arrived Golden late Thursday night to several inches of new snowfall on the ground, and checked into the Dreamcatcher hostel, my go-to digs in Golden.  Our helicopter flight into the hut wasn’t till Saturday morning, so I had a free day on Friday.  I went for a snow run around Golden, and got in a half day on skis at Kicking Horse Mountain resort.  The rest of the crew arrived town Friday afternoon as well, and after we loaded up on beer for the week, we all went out to a good dinner Friday night.  For many of us it was our first time meeting, but the group dynamic was good and we all hit it off right away.

I caught another quick run pre-dawn on Saturday morning and then we all carpooled out to the helipad.   There we prepped gear and met Christian, our solo traveler addition to the group, as well as Marty and Isaac.  Sunrise was the first hut to insert, so after a quick helicopter safety brief – the first five of us flew into Sunrise.

Once everyone arrives the lodge, which takes a couple turns of the 5 person helo, day one consists of basically getting settled, lunch, a lodge “in-brief”, and avy beacon refresher training.  Once that’s all done, we go out for an afternoon half-day.   This year at sunrise – our day one half day was epic and definitely fired us up for the week.

I’m not going to do a day by day recap of the week, because that would be tedious both for me and the reader.  But I’ll hit a few highlights….and try to give the reader a sense of what makes these trips special.

A usual day starts with breakfast and a discussion about options for the day, which is usually driven by weather and avalanche conditions but also factors in accessibility, fatigue, and desires of the group.  After that everyone starts getting geared up and prepped, including putting together a bag lunch to eat on the mtn.   *Each year I’ve been up there we’ve opted for the guided/catered package, which includes the food and a cook, so food prep is taken care of for us.  Around 0900 we set out, either up into the alpine or down into the glades.

I can’t really describe the skiing without sounding over the top.  I’ll just say that every single run is memorable.  Due to the sheer volume of snowfall and terrain, you rarely cross tracks and never have to worry about anything being “skied out”, at least by my standards.  Our guides were great…..Marty has decades of experience in the mountains both in BC and in the states, and serves as a rescue ranger in the Tetons.   Isaac is probably one of the best skiers I’ve ever skied with…super smooth and makes everything look effortless.   He broke trail and set the skin tracks through deep snow for most of the week.

Over the course of the week we received almost a meter and a half of snow at the hut (over 4 feet!).   It was a little on the warm side, hovering just below freezing most of the week, but the snow quality stayed really high, especially on the north facing aspects.  Some of the south facing aspects got a little baked, and down valley sometimes it would get thick, but overall it was predictable and very fun to ski.

We explored many of the different zones around the hut, adjacent draws and ridges, and some time in up in the alpine bowls later in the week when the weather cleared.   I ran my Garmin Fenix GPS each day, which tracks vertical data.  On average we were getting 4500 ft a day, with a max of ~6000.    The tree skiing was epic, ranging from tight technical trees to open glades where you could open up.   Highlight runs for the week in my mind were Two Sandwich, Gladiator, Lake Run, and Panorama Ridge.  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…..

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I lost my Gopro on Two Sandwich run, during a nice tomahawk wipeout.   Unfortunately I didn’t realize it had been ripped off till the bottom of the run, at which point going back up to look for it wasn’t a good option.   I was bummed for a few minutes, but then accepted it as lost and moved on.  The Gopro is replaceable…what was really lost was the 3 days of footage that I had on the SD card.   And actually,  I enjoyed skiing without it much more…..it’s one less thing to distract you from being in the moment.  But unfortunately, there will be no video edit from this years trip.

Usually the group would split around 2pm, with some folks opting to go in early.   For me personally, I’m not going to opt out of skiing world class terrain during the one week a year that I get to do it.  I stayed out as long as I could every day.  And if it were completely up to me I would have liked to have started earlier each day as well….by 9 am we’d already missed 2 hours of (good) daylight.   However, we were a group of 8, and I wasn’t going to be the driver of  the agenda for the week.  7 solid hours usually got us a decent amount of runs and vert.

A couple quick notes on hut life.  Just through being disconnected from the world, life is simplified.  However, we definitely weren’t “roughing it”.   There was a wood fired sauna that doubled as our shower, always plenty of good food, and we were able to bring in enough beer to make it through the week (barely).    Fresh water was retrieved from a lake that was a few hundred meters away (much farther than the water sources at the other huts).  The skin track from the lake to the hut with two full buckets of water on your shoulders was a bit of an effort.

The bathrooms had a world class view…..

At night we’d all have a group dinner, accompanied by the standard BS session.

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The end of the week sneaks up on you.   One moment its day 3, and you’re still early in the week, and then all of a sudden your wrapping up day 7 and prepping your gear to fly out.   On Saturday morning we did a pretty thorough hut cleanup, and loaded up our personal gear for the flight out.   It snowed the night before about 15cm, and was still snowing when we flew out and the next week’s crew flew in.

Flying out began a 27 hour travel ordeal for me to get back to VA.  Christian really hooked Roberta and I up by giving us a ride back to Calgary and letting us use his place to clean up and reorganize our gear.  From there I caught a red-eye and was home by the following afternoon.

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Don’t know yet what next season’s backcountry trip will look like.  Every year I’ve been up to GAH it’s been a slightly different experience, both in terrain/skiing as well as group dynamics.  I do need to do one more trip to GAH at some point to check out Sentry Lodge, but it may not be next winter.   Being that we’ll be living in NorCal, I may try to get some touring around the Sierras and maybe some formal avalanche/backcountry training.  We shall see…..